Thousands roared approval on Friday as a City Hall rally was told: "There will be more strike days."

Workers from across Belfast converged at the centre of civic power to hear union leaders queue up to lambast "unprecedented and brutal cuts".

The area around City Hall was a sea of colour as staff from hospitals, schools and a range of public sector bodies waved banners and flags for unions including Unite, NIPSA and Unison.

NIPSA's Brian Campfield told the crowd they should "make no apology for your defiance" in the face of continued austerity.

He added: "It is your civic responsibility to mobilise, to protest and to strike. This is about democracy. Democracy isn't just voting every four to five years, it's this."

And Unison's Patricia McKeown used the rally to take a swipe at the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service for declaring an emergency just hours before the strike was due to start.

The union believes the declaration was an effort to break the strike and Patricia McKeown warned: "Don't think for a minute using strike breaking tactics will damage our ambulance service. You've just made them very, very angry and you'll live with the consequences."

There was also a claim of major jib losses at the rally when Gerry Murphy from the teachers' the INTO claimed 100 "specialist language teachers are to be made compulsorily redundant".

He aimed the comment at Education Minister John O'Dowd.

The GMB's Denise Walker said her union represents many in the private sector facing zero hour contracts and low pay.

She added: "They say they want to grow the private sector but we will soon see the toxic affect in the private sector of a devastated public sector."

The rally ended with Paddy Mackel from the Belfast and District Trades Council warn "there will be more strike days, there will be more industrial action".

He added that Northern Ireland's leaders "should be afraid because we are standing shoulder to shoulder and we are not going to back down".